The mansion that became La Playa Carmel in 1916 continue to undergo changes over the years, with a renovation in 1984 -- a year after Apple's infamous offsite -- and the more recent $3.5 million makeover under the new ownership that has invited Apple back.

Image 6 of 7 - La Playa Carmel

The mansion that became La Playa Carmel in 1916 continue to undergo changes over the years, with a renovation in 1984 -- a year after Apple's infamous offsite -- and the more recent $3.5 million makeover under the new ownership that has invited Apple back.

The mansion that became La Playa Carmel in 1916 continue to undergo...changes over the years, with a renovation in 1984 -- a year after...Apple's infamous offsite -- and the more recent $3.5 million makeover...under the new ownership that has invited Apple back.

Image 7 of 7|La Playa Carmel

La Playa Carmel

Sorry, no skinny-dippers appear in this undated vintage photo from La Playa Carmel.

Image 7 of 7 - La Playa Carmel

Sorry, no skinny-dippers appear in this undated vintage photo from La Playa Carmel.

Sorry, no skinny-dippers appear in this undated vintage photo from La...Playa Carmel.

That’s the message from the new ownership of the recently restored La Playa Carmel, where Cupertino’s i-Thingies company has booked its first meeting since a raucous Macintosh team retreat in 1983 that reportedly included skinny-dipping and led the previous owners to ban further Apple gatherings.

Briefly mentioned in Walter Isaacson’s biography of the late Steve Jobs, the 75-room La Playa was one of several Northern California hotels favored by the Apple founder for offsite meetings, which were considered a “way of life” for the young firm, according to “West of Eden: The End of Innocence at Apple Computer” by Frank Rose. The secluded Pajaro Dunes resort, halfway between Santa Cruz and Carmel, was a particular favorite, Rose noted.

But with an equal reputation for privacy, plus the charm of Carmel, the hotel then known as just La Playa was also a good choice for the Macintosh team retreat on Jan. 27-28, 1983. According to Apple developer Andy Hertzfeld, the offsite came at a “pivotal time for the project,” as he explains on his Web site www.folklore.org:

The Lisa was just introduced the previous week, after four years of development, on January 19th (although it wouldn’t actually ship for another five months), and it was becoming increasingly clear that it was time for the Mac team to shift gears, buckle down and change our focus to doing whatever it took to finish up and ship.

To former Apple senior vice president Jay Elliot, the La Playa retreat was most notable for its attitude-changing outcome in a company that was beginning to seem too “Navy,” or bureaucratic: “When the crew left Carmel at the end of the meeting to return to Cupertino, no one had any doubt that we were Pirates, and Steve Jobs was the Pirate captain,” he writes in 2012′s ”Leading Apple With Steve Jobs: Management Lessons From a Controversial Genius.”

But the real dirt, at least from the hotelier’s perspective, comes in Rose’s account of the retreat, which he characterizes as “more like a college beer blast”:

When [Elliot] was eating dinner in the La Playa’s primly starched dining room and saw a dozen Macintosh people swimming nude in the lighted pool outside, he chuckled softly and went on with this meal, oblivious to the polite strangling sounds of the blue-haired ladies all around. He was, after all, the official guardian of Apple’s corporate culture, and if this was what he was supposed to guard, he was ready for the task.

… They all ran down to the beach and lit a bonfire, which was really fun until the police came and made them put it out. The next day they were invited gently but firmly never to return to the La Playa Hotel — whether because of the bonfire or the skinny-dipping they never knew for sure.

Originally built in 1905 by California landscape artist Christian Jorgenson as a gift for his wife, and converted into a hotel in 1916, La Playa was owned by the Cope family at the time of the Apple incident. The fantasy-Mission-style property went on the block in 2010 and closed in Nov. 2011, leading to controversy when the new owners, Grossman Company Properties, only rehired three of the previous 113 union employees, according to a workers’ group that continues to conduct occasional protests outside the hotel.

After the hotel’s closure, Grossman and management company Classic Hotels & Resorts undertook a $3.5 million renovation, with the results officially unveiled last Aug. 1. My SFGate colleague Christine Delsol previewed them the week before in her Central Coasting column:

For most guests, La Playa will seem like a hotel from another era that happens to have airy, beach cottage-style rooms with pillow-top mattresses, high-thread-count sheets, and flat-screen cable TV. The classic casement windows, the well-used doorknobs, the solidly built-in full-length mirrors, the shell ceiling lights, all belong to another era. Fit into the property’s evolution from private mansion to resort hotel, each room is unique.

“It has been our privilege and passion to transform La Playa Carmel and restore a century of Carmel tradition,” said Matt Crow, CEO of Classic Hotels & Resorts (which also restored the famed Arizona Biltmore), in a press statement. “When you are working with a storied property, one that means so much to the legacy guests and the community of Carmel, you have to exceed all expectations and most importantly, retain the soul of the place.”

And fortunately for today’s would-be skinny-dippers at Apple, La Playa Carmel also retained the pool.